


Warped Metal and Bad Timing

by YourLocalPriestess



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Pining, Pre-Relationship, and swearing, but here's some....banter, definitely not me, did anyone ask for this? no, did they get it? you bet, set during me1, who knows when??? no one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 16:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9665117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourLocalPriestess/pseuds/YourLocalPriestess
Summary: Commander Shepard is definitely a bad driver. Garrus Vakarian is definitely a good repairman. But Shepard's spectacular wrecks give him a run for his money.





	

**Author's Note:**

> From the MEFFW FB group prompt: "The stars seemed to mock her..."
> 
> Then this happened.

The stars seemed to mock her from their lofty dais of the sky. Shepard pressed her tongue to the inside of her cheek and returned her gaze the useless Mako. Her biotics flared and she kicked the door with a growl.

BANG!

Garrus rolled out from underneath the vehicle, his face plates aligned in what she was fairly certain was worry. Or annoyance. It was hard to say. She’d never worked closely with turians before Kyrik, and she barely knew Vakarian at all. He looked a little less intimidating wearing only his under armor, though.

As he leaned up from the small wheeled board and huffed out a breath, she almost swore she heard a light chuckle in his voice.

“You might want to do that one more time to really get the results you’re looking for.”

Her nostrils flared. “I don’t see whatever the fuck _you’re_ doing bringing in results either, Vakarian.”

His mandibles flicked out broadly. Was he grinning? He stood up and gestured at the box of repair tools they had found in the Mako earlier. “Please, be my guest.” He held out his eezo infused wrench with all the innocence of a child baiting a rabid dog.

“Fine,” she ground out, snatching the tool and settling herself onto the strange wheeled thing. She gathered the box in one hand and began to pull herself underneath. “And wipe that smug grin off your face.”

His laughter flew up into the night sky. She might appreciate it more if it wasn’t at her expense and if he wasn’t such an ass. Shaking her head, she focused on the gnarled metal work above her and groaned. “How on earth…” she muttered, searching for some place to start.

“What was that?” Despite his alien, dual-toned voice, he somehow managed to make his voice come out sing-song.

“Nothing,” she snapped. “Fucking half-witted, pyjack wrangling…” The rest of her curse words became unintelligible as she set to work attempting to meld together two pieces of the underside that were, clearly, not meant to be separate.

After two hours of twisting, pulling, shouting, swearing, and pleading, Shepard finally pushed herself out from under the vehicle and upright with a clang of tools being abruptly ejected from their box. “This was supposed to be a routine pick-up! No more than an hour tops! And this – this – _bullshit_ –” she shouted, punctuating each word with a biotic strike at the immobile vehicle. “Arrgh!” She threw a massive warp that did little more than jostle it. Panting, she threw her back against it and slid into a sitting position. “How did this happen, Garrus?” she sighed.

He still wore that smug look as he sauntered over and sat next to her. “I believe it was when I voiced my appreciation of your driving safely, which you then responded with by veering off the path and flooring it until we shot off the top of a mountain.”

A startled chuckle burst out of her. She ran a hand through her hair and poked her tongue into her cheek to keep from grinning. “I think you might be exaggerating, Vakarian.”

“With respect Commander, we hit two boulders and flipped once on the way down. I’m surprised we even survived.” Even though his statements were sincere, there was still a tremor of humor in the words.

She glanced his way and smirked. The bastard looked infuriatingly pleased with himself. “Alright, alright.” She dropped the hand from her hair and leaned both of her arms on her knees. The stars still twinkled her way, still hopelessly distant. She sighed. “I can’t believe I ruined it so completely.”

“We could, you know, call Joker. Like we could have done six hours ago. When the sun was still out.”

She rolled her head toward him to level him with a raised eye brow. “And never hear the end of it? Ha!” She actually laughed then, and he joined her. She stars and moons of this planet were so clear that she could still see his face plainly. “No,” she added with one last chuckle. “We’re gonna fix this son of a bitch.”

“And how’s that working for you?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Alright, hot rod. Come on down and give her another whirl.” She nodded toward the vacated wheely, as she’d come to calling it in her head.

It was easy to see the grin on his face now, the way his plates shifted and his mandibles flared. How had she missed that before?

“With pleasure,” he purred.

The sound danced into her head and kicked out every thought she had. Her mouth popped open and she felt a blush creep into her cheeks. She struggled for something to say, but he was already moving, settling himself onto the wheely, and moving underneath without so much as a glance in her direction.

“Now wait a second,” she huffed, finally catching her breath. “Just what difference do you really –” she grunted as she scrambled up and wiggled next to him, “think you’ll make that I couldn’t?”

“Well, for starters, hold this light.” He passed her the compact flashlight and his fingers brushed her own in the process. Another blush took over her face. _What the_ fuck _, Cal?_ She was suddenly grateful that he only had eyes for the metal work above him.

“It look like you welded this here –” He grunted as he yanked the tube off her weld. Yanked it. With his arms. She swallowed. “When you should have put it over here,” he pointed with one hand, using the other to guide the tube on that way. “Now hold this.” He grabbed her hand in his own and placed hers over the indicated point.

Shepard was pretty sure every part of her was on fire.

“Umm…”

“No complaints, Shepard. Trust me on this.”

He was rummaging in the tool box and missed the way her hand almost dropped off of the tube. But she didn’t miss the way he’d said her name, with a kind of familiarity and warmth she was anything _but_ familiar with. She didn’t miss that it was the first time he called her Shepard.

“Alright, here we go,” he muttered, lighting the mini-blow torch.

It went on like that for over an hour. Their shoulders, hands, and arms brushing so constantly that Shepard had developed some kind numbness to it by the end, written off her unwanted butterflied to the small space and the blurred line that team banter created. Yes. Definitely a fluke. Nothing to see here. So she worked. She found her voice and helped him as best she could, but by and large he was far more skilled at this than she was, so she let him assume the lead.

“Okay. I think we’ve done all we can for her,” he finally said.

“Yeah?” She grinned and glanced at him. The blue of his visor and the flashlight cast the odd planes of his face in strange shadows. _Focus_. “And she’ll run?”

“Oh, no,” he chuckled, packing the last of his tools away. “She’s been a lost cause since we landed at the bottom of this mountain.”

Shepard gaped, but a grin broke over her face, regardless; and then her laugh was bouncing around the small space with his. She didn’t even think before she punched him in the arm.

Her closed fist, which had only struck him softly, rested there against his unarmored bicep. Heat radiated through the thin fabric of his under armor and into the flat tops of her fingers. Silence fell between them as he registered the touch, the closeness. Shepard felt the oxygen being sucked from the cramped space they were inhabiting. She glanced up at him to find him already looking at her, his mandibles fluttering against his face and eyes blinking a few more times than what could be strictly normal. She couldn’t tear her eyes from his blue ones. Were they always so piercing? Oh god, her hand was still on his arm. She looked at the loosened fist and back to him, her eyes freezing at his foreign mouth.

She wet her lips and finally looked into his eyes again. “Umm…” She pulled her hand back to her chest slowly. His eyes followed the movement. “I think you’re right. Sorry, for uh, making you wait it out. I’m just gonna…call Joker then...”

With all the grace of a spooked pyjack, she wiggled herself free from the underbelly of the mechanical beast before he had a chance to speak, or stare, or touch, or _speak_ , goddamnit. The ground lit up in a vibrant orange as she fired off a call for pick up. She only had to wait seconds for the reply. ETA 10 minutes. Fucking perfect. She had wasted over six hours for a 10 minute pick up.

“What’s our ETA, Commander?”

She didn’t miss the use of her title when he addressed her, or the fact that he had switched to a much more professional, coarse tone. She also did not miss the fact that he had put on his armor. In three minutes. _You’re a goddamn deviant, Shepard. You scared the poor bastard._ His expression was a perfect mask of stoic squad mate.

“Ten minutes,” she announced, doing her best to use a clipped tone.

One horrible moment of silence, and then he laughed. And just like that, the charade of professionalism brought on by her own strangeness was shattered and again replaced with a much more welcome comradery.

Garrus grinned and that throaty laugh of his was lava burning through her snow. “You’re right,” he chuckled. “You are _never_ hearing the end of this.”

She gulped. _I need a cold shower_.


End file.
